Chapter 55: Waaagh Field Interference
Over the following hours, the sky went fully dark and the southern district became a meatgrinder in every sense the word could hold.
The Strategic Display was dense with red contacts. The green markers of Duvette's own squad positions looked thin and fragile against the incoming tide, each pulse of movement representing an exchange of fire or a withdrawal. The blue markers of the tank positions sat like isolated islands, cannon fire still going out continuously, but the red tide kept coming.
The Ork assault did not weaken. It grew.
At first it had been ordinary Orks in crude vehicles, waving blades and charging. But more dangerous elements were appearing now.
Tank Bustas had entered the fight. These Orks existed specifically to kill heavy vehicles. They came through the ruins carrying makeshift rocket launchers and bundles of explosive charges, moving through the rubble, looking for tank flanks and track assemblies. Their approach to tactics was crude and unpredictable in roughly equal measure, and several times they came close to breaking through the Black Cross Armoured Regiment's defensive positions.
Kommandos had joined as well. These Orks were quieter than the standard variety and considerably more calculating. They did not roar and charge. They moved through shadow, using collapsed buildings and the underground drainage network to infiltrate behind the defensive line. Their equipment reflected the difference: home-made weapons with suppressed actions, blades painted black, mechanical jaw-trap devices capable of cutting through carapace armour.
The Ash Watchers' 101st and the Kommandos settled into a hunt and counter-hunt through the city's tangled side streets.
On one side: disciplined, quiet soldiers operating in squad formation under the Soul of the Legion's sustained influence, following Duvette's real-time instructions. Alternating cover in relay, using glow sticks for coordination in the dark, lasrifle precision fire, grenades sealing passage openings, meltaguns clearing threats that had found cover.
On the other side: Orks responding to being hunted by becoming worse to hunt.
Without Duvette's continuous reporting on the open channel, the Black Cross Armoured Regiment's losses would not have stopped at five Leman Russ.
"Black Cross Sixth Squadron, ten o'clock, eighty meters, Tank Bustas on the second floor of the ruin. Repeat, second floor."
"Received."
The Leman Russ's coaxial weapon swept the indicated direction. The burst went into the half-collapsed building and tore through it, and the secondary detonations from the explosive charges the Tank Bustas were carrying came from inside the structure a moment later.
"Black Cross Third Squadron, Orks attempting to flank on your forward street. Recommend withdrawing twenty meters and using your main gun to cover the junction."
"Understood."
Engine noise as the tank reversed. Main gun traversing. One second later, a high-explosive round detonated at the junction and the five or six Kommandos attempting the encirclement ceased to exist as a tactical problem.
"Sister Olivia, your forward path has an Ork trap. There are Orks in the building wreckage ahead and to your right waiting to ambush you."
A brief burst of battle cries and the sound of bolt rounds. Then Sister Olivia's voice came through, flat and composed. "Dealt with. Thank you for the warning, Commissar."
After several hours of this, the Black Cross Armoured Regiment and the Battle Sisters had fully committed to Duvette's intelligence picture. If he said fire there, they fired there. The coordination born out of that trust was keeping people alive in a fight that was otherwise grinding everyone down.
The cost was still accumulating.
To sustain the 101st through to dawn, Duvette spent one hundred Emperor's Wrath to upgrade Focused Volley.
[Focused Volley (Level 2) -- Upgraded. Cooldown reset. Duration extended: 15 minutes to 1 hour.]
[For the skill's duration: ranged accuracy of troops under your command is moderately increased. Ammunition consumption is moderately reduced. Weapon wear is moderately reduced.]
At this point, the reinforced company Duvette was leading directly numbered under a hundred soldiers. They were withdrawing street by street through the southern district, fighting as they went. The buildings on both sides had been largely reduced to wreckage by the fighting, and the rubble that provided cover also provided the Orks with new infiltration routes.
"Suppress the left flank!" Duvette's voice went into the company channel. "Right-side squads, alternate withdrawal!"
Las beams crossed the dark street in both directions. The soldiers moved back-to-back, muzzles continuously tracking threats. Ahead of them: broken walls, debris, and Orks coming out of every angle.
Orks charged into the fire without slowing. Most of them wore nothing that could be called armour, but their constitution was such that even a full-power las beam through the head required follow-up shots before the body stopped moving. One Ork took three burning holes through the chest and kept screaming and charging until Anderson put his chainsword through it from shoulder to waist and it finally went down.
Explosions from somewhere close. The sounds of Ork screaming, briefly.
Duvette was kept in the center of the formation. His function was not to fire. His function was to observe, coordinate, and control the full picture. He had his back against a section of wall that was still mostly intact, eyes half-closed, all of his attention on the Strategic Display in his vision.
Red contacts shifting. Blue markers holding or faltering. Green squad positions. Yellow Battle Sister positions. The information came in like a current and converted into orders fast enough that the gap between input and output was barely perceptible.
He fed positions, warnings, and firing instructions to tank squadrons, 101st squad elements, and the Battle Sisters in a continuous stream. He was not fighting the battle. He was the mechanism through which the battle could be fought.
"Anderson," Duvette said, without taking his eyes off the display.
"Commissar?" The big man had just used the heavy stubber to put a wall of rounds through an Ork that had been trying to close in.
"Three o'clock," Duvette said, his voice entirely level. "Behind the collapsed section of wall. Use concentrated heavy fire."
"Understood."
Anderson went to one knee without hesitation, stabilized the heavy stubber, and opened up. The rest of the company's heavy weapons came in simultaneously. Machine-gunners pivoted and added their fire. The rocket tube was loaded and discharged.
The barrage landed on a squad of Kommandos that had been concealed almost perfectly. They had been lying in the rubble behind a fallen billboard, bodies covered in debris and dust, barely making any sound at all. Without the Strategic Display, their ambush would have worked exactly as they had planned it.
They became charred remains instead.
Duvette did not look at the result. He watched the display. The red contacts in that sector had thinned slightly.
"Withdraw," he said. "We fall back to Saint Liviel Avenue and link up with Black Cross Sixth Squadron. Then we push northwest. The Ork density is lower in that direction."
The company began an orderly withdrawal. Wounded soldiers were supported. Weapons of the dead were recovered. Their identity tags were collected carefully. They moved along the planned withdrawal route, every step accompanied by scanning eyes and weapons that did not come down from ready.
Time passed.
Duvette checked the time in his vision. 03:17. Complete darkness everywhere, broken only by the continuous back-and-forth of weapons fire, las beams, and the noise of fighting in every direction.
Approximately three hours until dawn. If they held until then, the spore fog would begin to dissipate under direct sunlight and the visibility improvement would swing the balance significantly back toward the defenders.
The civilian column would be well clear by now. A few more hours.
Then the Strategic Display showed something wrong.
Several red contacts were moving in a way that had no reasonable explanation.
They were traveling in a straight line, directly toward a concentration of blue markers. Three Leman Russ holding a crossroads. Black Cross Third Squadron.
The anomaly was the path. These contacts were not navigating around obstacles. They were going through them in a direct line, as though whatever was producing the contacts did not recognize that obstacles existed.
What was this? Some form of Ork heavy vehicle? He ran through his knowledge of Ork military assets quickly. Possibly Deff Dreads â€" an Ork approximation of the Imperial Dreadnought, walking walker constructs built from salvaged machinery â€" or some other class of heavy unit. Either way, the Third Squadron needed a warning immediately.
"Colonel Kleist!" He pushed his voice into the open channel. "Black Cross Third Squadron, attention! High-speed heavy units approaching your position directly from due south, four hundred meters out, extreme velocity! I recommend youâ€""
The channel went flat.
Duvette's earpiece produced a low sustained hum, a resonance like an energy field vibrating at a frequency it should not have been occupying.
He switched to the 101st command channel. The same dead tone. He switched to the PDF and Battle Sisters' shared line. The same hum.
"Comms check!" He turned to the soldiers around him. "Are your earpieces working?"
Every soldier around him shook their head. They were slapping their communication units, pressing at the sides of their helmets. Anderson had both hands against the sides of his head, brow deeply furrowed. "Nothing but noise, Commissar. I can't hear anything."
Then the Waaagh battle cry arrived from every direction at once.
It was not a sound that could be described adequately in acoustic terms. The combined output of every Ork in the district, all of them at their full capacity, produced something that occupied frequencies sound was not supposed to reach, and the physical world reacted to it accordingly. The ground under their feet vibrated. The air distorted in the sound waves' path. The cry had weight and it landed on every person in range with the force of something physical, hitting the ears and the nervous system simultaneously.
Duvette's vision swam. He put a hand against the wall and locked his jaw.
This was not random. A Weirdboy had channeled the Waaagh energy into this.
They were completely cut off.
No tank fire support. No cross-unit coordination. No real-time intelligence reaching anyone. Every position in the city had just become an island, each one holding or failing on its own with no ability to communicate the difference.
In the darkness, without coordination, they were at a structural disadvantage that no amount of individual discipline could fully compensate for. If communications were not restored, a total collapse was the only available outcome.
Duvette drew a long breath and forced himself to stillness.
He looked at the Strategic Display.
Third Squadron's blue markers were in contact with the anomalous red dots. In the span of a few seconds, one blue marker went dark. One Leman Russ destroyed. A second blue marker began pulsing. Severe damage.
Across the display, other positions were showing the same pattern. Tank squadrons unable to coordinate effectively. 101st squad elements unable to reposition on instruction. The balance of the fight was shifting, and it was shifting fast.
"Change of tactics." Duvette said it to the soldiers immediately around him, his voice cutting through the noise. "We have lost communications with our allied forces. Everything that decides this fight now depends on us."
Every soldier in reach looked at him. The tension was visible. The trust was more visible.
"Stay close to me." He raised his voice over the Waaagh cry. "We move to link up with every unit we can reach. We rebuild the command chain on the ground. First step: Saint Liviel Avenue. We meet Black Cross Sixth Squadron in person."
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